The Michigan Education Association and Michigan Republican Party are on speaking terms – sort of. SIGN OF TIMES: An MEA-financed billboard from last year’s elections reflect the heated rhetoric that has come to mark the union’s relationship with the Republican Party. (courtesy photo) Last year, the two sides regularly exchanged plenty of words – words […]
Rick Haglund
Rick Haglund has had a distinguished career covering Michigan business, economics and government at newspapers throughout the state. Most recently, at Booth Newspapers he wrote a statewide business column and was one of only three such columnists in Michigan. He also covered the auto industry and Michigan’s economy extensively.
Posted inTalent & Education
As Right to Work takes root, MEA faces rough lessons from Wisconsin
LABOR LOSS: Protesters packed the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 in opposition to restrictions on public-sector union organizing. Since the restrictions were implemented, the number of public-sector union worker has dropped 21 percent. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) In the hectic days of last December, as the Michigan Legislature prepared to pass a Right-to-Work […]
Posted inTalent & Education
MEA faces breakaways, poaching of locals
Just months after Right to Work was enacted in Michigan, Michigan Education Association local units are looking to depart the mothership. MEA NO MORE: Teachers in the Roscommon schools decided in 2012 to leave the Michigan Education Association and form their own independent bargaining unit. (courtesy photo) MEA leaders say local units have left – and […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
State caught in troubling jobless trend
Almost half of Michigan’s unemployed in 2012 were jobless for at least six months. And the average jobless Michigan resident went without work for more than 10 months. As Michigan’s economy improves and job openings proliferate, a troubling trend is revealing itself in kitchen-table stories and government analyses: The long-term jobless may be in danger […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
State looks to turn trickle of returning college grads into a flood
BACK IN MICHIGAN: Courtney Vaught, 27, and her fiancé left Michigan after they were laid off in 2010. But a promotion brought them back. Gov. Rick Snyder and other state leaders are trying to find methods to replicate Vaught’s story and raise the state’s percentage of college-education workers. (Bridge photo/Lon Horwedel) Laura VanHolstyn graduated from […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
MSU expert has surprising advice about liberal arts degrees, job hunting
Phil Gardner is the director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. For the past 23 years, he has overseen MSU’s annual college labor market study, a much-watched barometer of the job market for college graduates and the health of the overall labor market. Gardner spoke with Bridge correspondent Rick Haglund about […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Is shortage due to skills or wages?
Steve Lowe Jr. is scrambling to find more than a dozen skilled machinists, experienced engineers and laborers after his company recently won a multimillion-dollar contract to build giant camshafts for diesel locomotive engines. He said he’s sought out state work force agencies, local community colleges and employment agencies in seeking the workers he needs to […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Average Michigan wage earner is $5,000 behind other Americans
When politicians talk about Michigan’s “lost decade” of the 2000s, they usually focus on the huge number of jobs shed by the state. Michigan lost 863,300 payroll jobs between April 2000 and July 2009, at the bottom of the state’s downturn, or nearly one out of every five jobs. But a less-discussed element of that […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Jackson businesses try DIY job-training to create skilled workers
DIY EMPLOYMENT: Welding students practice at the Jackson Academy for Manufacturing Careers, a job-training center started by manufacturers to fill a training gap left by cutbacks in public programs. Welders are in high demand right now and can earn $25 an hour. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) After voters turned down a millage request […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
State again riding auto upswing
Nearly given up for dead a few years ago, Michigan’s automakers have come roaring back and are leading one of the strongest state economic recoveries in the nation. Today, General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC are churning out billions of dollars in profits and are hiring thousands of workers. But we’ve seen […]
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